Property owners may have to change their house numbers to help emergency personnel
By Kimberly Marselas
Intelligencer Journal
Copyright 2007 Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.
LANCASTER, Pa. — About 60 property owners in Earl and East Earl townships may have to change their addresses to ensure that fire companies and police respond to the correct location in an emergency.
Officials from Earl, East Earl and Ephrata townships, Martindale Fire Company, the postal service and Lancaster County-Wide Communications met March 13 to hash out a renumbering plan for Martindale Road.
Dozens of homes on the road have the same house numbers, a duplication fire officials said could be a crisis in the making. Without enough information from callers, dispatchers cannot easily distinguish between addresses within the three townships.
The meeting was a work session that allowed supervisors and other officials to hatch a fledgling plan. Afterward, officials said East Earl is most likely to rename the stretch of Martindale that runs through its jurisdiction, while Earl agreed to consider changing the house numbers for about 50 properties on its share of Martindale.
Supervisors will meet with residents and continue to debate the plan before taking action, but Martindale Fire Company Chief Anthony Groff said he was pleased with the progress.
“I thought everybody worked together really well,” he said. “Nobody was holding back.”
The townships tried to resolve this issue in 2005, but officials from East Earl, which has only about 10 affected homes, told the countywide communications they did not want to make residents change addresses. The problem began because Earl renamed the former Lancaster Avenue to become Martindale Road, a move Earl secretary and treasurer Brenda Becker said was requested by the county.
At the urging of the fire company, the townships are trying to resolve the issue.
“We want to get it done as soon as possible,” said Connie Gross, East Earl secretary and treasurer.
David Zimmerman, East Earl’s supervisor chairman and roadmaster, will begin the process by meeting with residents who would be affected.
County-Wide communications, which handles 911 calls in Lancaster County, and the postal service would have to approve the plan. If the supervisors eventually finalize a name change, Gross said residents would be notified by certified letters and their mail would be forwarded for one year.
In Earl, renumbering could come for discussion before the supervisors at their April meeting. Groff said renumbering there would put odd- and even-numbered houses on the same side of the street as in the other municipalities. He also would like to see block breaks, meaning if the last house on a block is 450 Martindale, the next block would begin at 500.
Under the current proposal, Ephrata Township residents who live on Martindale don’t have to worry about address changes.
“There’s a possibility we won’t have to do anything at all,” Ephrata Township Manager Steve Sawyer said.